Maggotry

[Reflective mode enabled.]

For me as a reader, the chapter "Maggot" is the point when Black Swan Green "gets real." I've read plenty of books about the whims and whiles of uncool kids but "Maggot" gives BSG some deep roots into the kind of dark suffering and challenges endured by Holden and Esther.

On a personal level, I can relate to Jason for a number of years in my past, though I have never had it as intense (at least as recorded in my memory, years after the fact).

Even 20-30 years after the events of BSG (set in 1982) and an Atlantic Ocean away, harassment I have experienced generally falls along these lines:

• Being devalued in action and words for not upholding a (sub)standard of masculinity (including the haphazard misapplication of words like "gay", much as Jason experiences). In particular, this can be further broken down:
• not having an interest in sports
• valuing honor, decency, respect, and good behavior
• having a calm, reserved demeanor—tending to act meek rather than brutish
• taking an interest in schoolwork, science, etc.
• general lack of conformity (like not having blue as a favorite color)
• Being fat and lacking athletic ability.
• Not giving a damn to fit in with the aforementioned athletic, self-appointed "cool" group.

I have seen this pattern both during my six years attending a small rural school district in North Kentucky (aka Indiana) and here at Uni High. Which brings me to...

Story time! I was fairly derided from when I started Uni as a subfreshman until an incident freshman year in our English class. Without going into detail, the following day I asked to speak in front of the class and denounced what had occurred. After that exact point, some sort of knowledge rippled out that, pardon the phrasing (I can't think of anything better), I "was not to be messed with," at least that harassment was no longer intended for me myself to hear, see, and feel. Or, depending on the person, I may have been regarded genuinely better. (I did get some apologies.) Yet, even though I was no longer a target, I don't think the root problem went away, even to the present day. I still see the same attitudes applied to all manner of people and ideas, except I am not in the crosshairs.

Not to make this a gripe session... All I can say is that I am looking forward to participating in the Day of Silence, technically today as the clock ticks.

Art as Counter-Transience

A thread I have seen tying the five course books so far together has been the use of art (particularly writing) as a method to preserve fleeting, transient moments or experiences.

Stephen is all about being an artist by the end of Portrait. Admittedly, he is focused more on capturing something with his art than a moment in time.

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use--silence, exile, and cunning. (Joyce 268-289)

One of the most tender moments in Catcher (and one of my favorites) is when Holden writes the composition for Stradlater about Allie's baseball mitt (hence preserving him) and he recounts Allie's death to us for the first time. In this quotation, he expresses his sentiment to Phoebe:

"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and--"
"Allie's dead--You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really--"
"I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all." (Salinger 171)

Also worthy of mention from Catcher is the Museum of Natural History:

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it. (Salinger 121-122)

In Black Swan Green, Madame Crommelynck describes her childhood home, Zedelgem Château:

“Do you still own it?”
“It no longer exists. The Germans built an airfield where you see, so the British, the Americans . . .” Her hand made a boom gesture. “Stones, craters, mud. Now is all little boxes for houses, a gasoline station, a supermarket. Out home who survived half a millennium exists now only in a few old heads. And a few old photographs. My wise friend Susan has written this. ‘By slicing out this moment and freezing it . . .’ ” Madame Crommelynck studied the girl she’d once been and tapped ash from her cigarette. “ ‘. . . all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.’ ” (Mitchell 157)

Even in the books without explicit reference to art as amber, the novels themselves function (and excel) as vessels of a specific time and place. (It could be said that such an effect is inherent to all art.) The Bell Jar chronicles Esther being dragged through mental illness and depression. In class, I recall a mention that Housekeeping, as written by Ruth, preserves both Edmund's house and transient imagery, such as the wind blowing leaves around the house.

Symbolism in Lucille

Housekeeping has taken a while to digest. I think I finally have a tidbit worthy of sharing as a blog post.

“They seem to be nice children.”
“Very quiet.”
“Not as pretty as Helen was.”
“The one has pretty hair.” (31-32)

There was a little silence, and then Sylvie hesitantly put her icy hand on my head and said, “You're Ruthie. And you're Lucille. Lucille has the lovely red hair.” (45)

There is a fairly good case that Lucille's red hair is a symbol related to her eventual flight from Ruth and Sylvie. I have been musing how transience is also to some degree a trait in the Foster family tree.

I constructed this family tree diagram and categorized each member using colors.

Key:

Domesticity

Death

Transience

Absence

(We get the full name "Lucille Stone" on page 217.)

I'm not sure we can equate the deaths with transience (especially considering that Edmund Foster built the house) but they are related phenomena, overlapping, for example, when Sylvie walks out onto the train bridge. My original plan was to include absence with transience but Molly and Reginald to our knowledge don't move around. Fisher is a complete unknown, so I matched his type with Sylvie.

Sylvie's hair is light brown (11). Reginald Stone is "apparently a pale fellow with sleek black hair" (14). No one else in the family has red hair that we are told. Red hair is a recessive trait, technically, and it is unlikely that Robinson took formal genetics into account as she crafted her fiction novel, so we don't know where Lucille's red hair actually came from. To use a similar analogy, transience/premature death/absence/weirdness would be a dominant trait in the Foster line that Lucille does not have.